Arlington County, Virginia correctly concluded that it was lemons after testing out a flawed voting method known as Rank Choice Voting (RCV).
The county gave the RCV its first try to fill two seats on the county commission in May’s Democratic primary. But widespread voter confusion over the RCV’s complicated counting formula and unpredictable results prompted Arlington to send it to Congress. junk After just one use.
Arlington was the first Virginia jurisdiction to adopt RCV, and if voters are lucky, it will be the last. (Related: Suzanne Downing: Ranked Voting Could Hurt Alaska Republicans Again… Again)
Most Americans understand how elections work: whoever gets the most votes wins. But RCV changes everything. Instead of voting for her one candidate in a campaign, voters rank many candidates in each campaign. If no candidate has more than 50% of the first-place votes, the candidate is eliminated and the votes are redistributed until someone wins a majority of the remaining ballots.
In Arlington, voters were asked to rank three of the six candidates from start to finish. After multiple rounds of elimination, the candidate with the first and third most votes ultimately won.
Arlington voters learned first-hand why the Washington Post did called RCV is “difficult to understand and not understood by many”. But RCV is problematic for reasons other than its cumbersome nature.
If voters fail to rank all the candidates on the ballot, they run the risk of getting the only vote thrown out A common occurrence during qualifying rounds, euphemistically dismissed as “ballot exhaustion,” actually amounts to disenfranchisement.
Candidates who could have won a regular election often end up losing to RCV. It happened to Natalie Roy from Arlington University. He received the second most votes and would otherwise have secured one of the two nominations.Republican Representative Bruce Polyquin of Maine also received multiple votes, but then lose his RCV election. Concerns about the undemocratic nature of the RCV prompted the Arlington NAACP to respond closely. monitor The RCV election results “will not deprive or prevent anyone of their basic voting rights.”
Supporters of the RCV argued that the system would ensure the victory of the candidate with the support of a majority of the people. But now they are changing. FairVote, the largest national organization promoting RVC adoption, recently Conceded He told The Washington Post that the RCV is focused on giving “more voice” to factions “not large enough to otherwise win seats.”
Indeed, FairVote defended Arlington’s bizarre outcome, arguing that RCV would help ensure that a “narrow majority” would not win. Now you know. RCV is not about revealing consensus, it is about suppressing the majority in favor of an election result that the political elite deems to be sufficiently inclusive.
Worse, efforts to establish cumbersome RCVs are becoming more difficult. refueled By a left-wing black-finance group focused on altering elections for partisan interests. Organizations backed by left-wing mega-donors like George Soros fundraising Lobbyist and voting measures efforts to spread RCV nationwide.
They hope to normalize RCV in smaller contests where problems are easier to hide, starting with cities and counties. Then they push RCV for state and federal elections.
Meanwhile, other big money special interests and even the wealthy foreign investor I support programs that use litigation to rewrite state voting laws and push liberal influence into election offices through programs such as: United States Electoral Excellence Alliance. In other words, the Left seeks to comprehensively reshape voting for political gain.
Virginia isn’t the only state where black money has tried to redesign elections using RCV. So far, two states and about 60 cities and counties are using RCV. In 2024, many other states could face RCV-backed black money ballot measures as well. But states are starting to fight back. Five states have already banned RCVs, including Tennessee, Florida, Idaho, South Dakota and Montana.
And jurisdictions that have attempted RCV are moving away.Utah launched A pilot RCV program was implemented in 2019. Twenty-three towns and cities eventually participated, but nearly half have now withdrawn, fearing the costs of using RCVs and eroding public confidence in the electoral process.
In Aspen, Colorado, 65% of voters did the same. abolition RCV favors returning to the traditional electoral process that relies on karakuri systems after just one election.and Alaskan in May do the same.
What is clear is that RCV cannot improve the electoral process or create trust. Arlington County has most recently attempted and rejected this. It is time for all states to make voting easier and cheating harder by banning ranked voting.
Jason Snead is Executive Director of Honest Elections Project Action, a nonpartisan organization that supports free and honest elections.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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